Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Design Deficit in India

“Design thinking is not part of the Indian business psyche”……as rightly observed by Kamya Jaiswal in this ET cover story titled “India Inc’s Design Deficit” [The Economic Times on Sunday, 6 May 2012].

Some excerpts [blogger comments]:
“Design thinking is not limited to a culture or particular product or service category. It is a set of principles that can be used very broadly, need to be understood, and can be learned by managers all over the world”….Stefan Thomke, William Barclay Harding Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School.

“Where art meets engineering, where form sharpens function, where beauty adds to the bottomline – therein lies the great weakness of Indian business.” ...[Note: This is partly a fall out of our education system that promotes silos.]

“….Technology convergence has made disruptive design a norm and digitisation has shrunk the time to market of new ideas.”

“….As the creative goal posts keep moving forward, Indian businesses can………decide to build design capabilities of the future. This doesn't only mean setting up design labs but also collaborating with academia. The well-worn cliche of a creative eco system must be brought to life.”

“….Finally, our engineers and managers must learn to imagine.”

Here is where Indian Educators need to come up with models to overcome the design deficit. As noted above, our weaknesses lie at the interfaces (or the boundaries). We need to build bridges to foster multidisciplinary interactions between areas, departments and schools. Engineers and managers need to be encouraged to look beyond narrow domains of specializations. 

Related blogs:

No comments: